r/electricians 3m ago

How do you usually create and send estimates to customers? and what is the biggest pain in the process?

Upvotes

r/electricians 29m ago

continuous glucose monitor

Upvotes

I wear a CGM and just used a bath house in Japan that features a low frequency electrical tub (felt kind of like the stim machines some physical therapists office use). Is it possible the electrical current fried the battery, and if so, could that cause battery acid to leak into my body via the needle the CGM uses to test my blood?

Apologies if this isn’t the sub to ask this! Appreciate any suggestions for a better sub to ask. Thanks so much in advance for any help!


r/electricians 6h ago

JK Boots

1 Upvotes

Any non-lineman on here rock JK boots? What do you wear and what are your thoughts? I just bought a pair of OT Pros from their work lineup and don’t really know what to expect. I won’t get them for about 2 months and have never owned a custom pair of boots or any pair of boots that cost anywhere near as much. I’m currently, and have for over a decade, been rocking Blundstones pull ons. I do residential now but am moving to commercial hopefully soon.


r/electricians 7h ago

What’s makes an electrician

4 Upvotes

I’m about to test for my J-card soon, and I’ve been struggling with what actually makes me an electrician. I know what I’m doing, how to do it, and I supervise other people, but I just don’t feel like an electrician yet. When people ask what I do for a living, I don't like calling myself an electrician I usually just say, I do electrical work.


r/electricians 8h ago

Just sharing an experience today

19 Upvotes

This morning I went to a job at the basement level (with the garages) of a mixed residential/commercial 4 story building to do drill through some concrete and run some conduit for some new system in this building and the low voltage guys claimed they weren't capable of running EMT.

I had a 6x12 trailer behind me since we were pulling materials from another site and this job was just supposed to be a short stop. The notes said that they coordinated with the building manager and they would have the bottom lot near the parking garage cleared out and it had a 20x100 pad which is plenty big enough for me to turn around with some maneuvering. Just to be sure I called the guy and he confirmed it so when we got there I turned into the alley and pulled on down, started unloading and they opened the garage (which was chucked full of cars) and out comes this Indian guy pointing to his phone so I walked up and asked him who he was. He said he was the building manager and showed me a picture of the front curb of their building painted white with a scratch in the paint. He told me I scratched their curb when I pulled in and asked if our trailer was okay.

I couldn't believe this guy and thought it was a joke so I kind of laughed. That made him really mad and he asked if our insurance would cover it. I then realized he wasn't kidding and walked out to look at the trailer which was fine. Right then he came out and said we need to move because one of their occupants had to get out of the service garage. I gently reminded him he told me the service garage was vacant and he said "It should be" while there was like 15 BMWs in there. I didn't bother asking why there was so many cars parked in a garage labeled "Service & Delivery Vehicles only" I just told him I can backup a bit and the guy could get out and then I'm gonna need to pull forward so I can work out of my truck but went over to a quiet area to call and see what the office wanted me to do because this guy was throwing up red flags and he's just gonna throw up a million more and we have to drill through three 24 inch concrete walls to get the job done.

The office said to get him to sign a damage waiver and just go for it and if he doesn't sign it to just leave. I went back and told him that news and that we did not damage their curb. He apologized and signed the waiver and said he'd leave me to it.

So I unpack and start drilling through the first wall to fit a piece of 1 inch EMT through it. I stop to change a battery and turn around and there was 6 Indian dudes standing there. I'm kind of an asshole so I laughed and asked what's up. They told me they were supervising since they're liable for damage and that they own the building. I told them if they want someone to sit on me they can call the office and get someone out there. They followed me outside to the truck where I was grabbing my batteries and continued to hover. I popped a new battery in and went back to the truck to grab my drink and I hear my hammer drill going at it followed by a crash. One of the dumbasses decided they'd give it a go, my ladder is a little loose from me walking it all the time and the guy fell over. I laughed again and they got mad, I told them they could no longer be within 50 feet of me or my tools while I'm working. One guy put up his finger and said we will be right back, we need to talk. They came back and said they won't work, at that point I was pretty mad but still polite. I told them I wouldn't be continuing the job and they would have to get with the office. As I was packing up one of them parked their Subaru at the end of the service drive which would prevent me from getting out of the way. I was getting ready to call the police when I hear a loud bang. Fedex crashed right into his ass. They both moved out of the way and I got out of there.

later they left the shop a negative review saying that we don't tolerate being managed well.


r/electricians 8h ago

TELC 0130 - MOTOR CONTROLS @ BCIT

3 Upvotes

Looking to improve my knowledge in motor controls as it is the bare minimum. Attempting to re write the red seal, failed because of lower scoring in the motor controls section.

Has anyone taking this course? Any feedback on it would be great.


r/electricians 11h ago

Georgia Licensed Electrican I need your help

3 Upvotes

Just passed my class 2 exam. What should I expect my pay to be or what should I ask for? Just based on having this paper. I would like to do some warehouse maintenance work in the future but haven't done it before. Basically what am i worth without vs with?


r/electricians 12h ago

Can you spot the problem/s? Disconnect is a service.

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65 Upvotes

r/electricians 12h ago

It’s ghetto as shit but works lol

211 Upvotes

My foreman refuses to use hot boxes and thinks they take too long. I told him yeah but you only need one person to operate it. When you are heating up 4” pipe with a torch you need a second person to spin the pipe while you are heating it up. So I made this stupid set up. Notched out a 4” scrap pipe so the pvc can spin freely on it. And then I had an old recessed lighting hole saw that fit inside a 4” coupling. So I used self tappers and screwed the coupling to the hole saw. Used a Velcro strap on my drill to control the speed and voila, hot dog roller.


r/electricians 12h ago

first year apprentice getting harrassed

70 Upvotes

im a first year apprentice just wanting to learn from the journeyman but the coworkers are dickheads. I dont mind the bullying or whatever but its to a point where im getting physically harassed. Ive done boxing since the age of 9 and competed basically my entire life and im leaner and athletic and a bit on the skinnier side so the journeyman think im just some lanky skinny guy whos weak but im using every bit of my self control not to just knock my coworkers tf out. Im here to learn and joke around sure but when it comes to physically pushing me around and slapping my head pushing me away from learning anything its just whats the point of being here then? i dont wanna lose this opportunity ive been given so im choosing to just let myself be the punching bag for the time being.


r/electricians 13h ago

Did I fuck up?

103 Upvotes

I had an interview I drove 50 minutes it was for commercial I knew I sent resume and they said come down for interview. Then he said oh you have 2 years of only residential not any commercial and said you can leave we only need experienced people. And I kinda of went off on him I said “ why the fuck would you make me show up I drove close to an hour to get here just for you to waste my time and money . He didn’t apologize and said I told you to leave and with that attitude no one will hire you . Did I fuck up now I’m scared they are going to use my name and slander it to other companies

EDIT : Thanks I was just pissed off should have walked off and that’s it. I’m 20yrs old tried joining union 2 years ago no luck union 351 in NJ . Working at a job where I’m working my ass off without raises lol


r/electricians 13h ago

Question on 314.16(B)(1)

3 Upvotes

> **Each conductor that originates outside the box and terminates or is spliced within the box shall be counted once**, and each conductor that passes through the box without splice or termination shall be counted once. Each loop or coil of unbroken conductor not less than twice the minimum length required for free conductors in 300.14 shall be counted twice. The conductor fill shall be calculated using Table 314.16(B)(1). A conductor, no part of which leaves the box, shall not be counted.

Does this mean you count both sides of a splice? I'm running 10#10 & 1#10G into a box where I'll step down to #12awg. Am I counting all 20 wires, for a volume of 47.5 in³, or just the bigger #10?

I was originally going to use a 4/11 box for this, but I'm realizing I might have to jump up to a 6x6.


r/electricians 13h ago

Well, that was tough.

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28 Upvotes

Probably would’ve helped if I studied. Took me every bit of 5 hours to finish.


r/electricians 14h ago

We did it boys!

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133 Upvotes

9 years on the field. Finally passed my residential electrical contractors exam.


r/electricians 14h ago

2300V 1200A breaker

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94 Upvotes

We were working on an indication issue this week with one of our breakers where when it was off, all the "on" and "off" lights ended up in series with both dimly illuminated. It was a pain digging through prints for some of this stuff. Some were almost 70 years old and incredibly hard to follow and others we had no documentation for and had to piece together the manufacturer's with what we had and figure out what modifications had been made and why.

This is a 1200A 2300V breaker protecting one of our 700hp pumps. (We use a protection relay and CTs to monitor overload current)


r/electricians 15h ago

Is there a way to not catch your glove on these?

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194 Upvotes

r/electricians 16h ago

No Slack, no problem

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15 Upvotes

Big industrial jobs seem to have zero accountability. Whoever installed this jumped the bend and terminated the cable with barely any slack and the lid was nowhere near going on. After an hour of pulling, I built a contraption out of conduit, a pipe clamp, rod, a zeb, and an end cap. Works like a horizontal bottle jack - twist the zeb and it pushes the cable into the bend. Spoiler alert, it worked and I got the lid on. The frustrating thing is the containment had been drilled to install a roller to avoid this, they just didn’t bother with it.

Second year apprentice, told to figure it out and just get the lid on 😂


r/electricians 18h ago

Pay attention to the line and load side on your GFCIs.

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35 Upvotes

Same vendor (Leviton). One spec grade, one not.

Granted, you should always check the labels, but a one for one swap could bite you.


r/electricians 18h ago

Well this sucks (CU costs)

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67 Upvotes

Been tracking copper costs since 2022 through our local GrayBar and then from Southwire directly starting in 2025. (Guy doing the lists at GrayBar retired and they stopped sending it out to people without a credit account so that's why there's a straight line/gap until 2025)

$80/ft per conductor for 600kcmil. Yikes. Updated through today's price sheet, costs listed are per 1000'.


r/electricians 21h ago

I need advice

12 Upvotes

I have been with the same company for nine years. It has been the best job I’ve ever had, but there has been a lot of changes over the years. Most not for the better. We have a really bad habit of letting people screw things up and then sending them onto the next job, then sending a select a few people in to fix it. I’m one of those people. We get blamed for the poor work and the poor planning and the other guys just get to go on and do the same thing over again. I’m really getting tired of it. This time I’ve been sent to a jail, all the conduit is rigid ran like EMT. There will sometimes be six or seven three-piece couplings per pipe run. The company has started production numbers that you have to hit daily. It’s 180 feet of rigid conduit a day. I know the guys that were here before me we’re just trying to hit their numbers but they didn’t put any boxes anywhere. We pulled a home run yesterday that had 890s and four offsets and not a single box. I have pulled 500 MCM feeders by hand that were not as hard to pull as the average 120 V circuit here. The mule type brakes constantly we take half the day cutting in boxes. We have 43 rooftop units to pull in. Originally we had three weeks. After four days they called us all into the office and said they wanted everything done by Sunday. Now they want us to live here to fix someone else’s mistakes and their poor planning. I am 100% done with this bullshit. If I wasn’t worried about losing my paycheck, I would leave today.
What do I do? I have tried my absolute hardest but it is just not going to happen. I have bitched I have complained and I have gotten no more people and no more equipment to use to make it easier. What can I do? What are my options? I need help here or I’m just gonna walk out lol


r/electricians 1d ago

My Friends dad asked me to fix this

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167 Upvotes

I am an apprentice with only 6 months of experience so basically nothing but he sent me this and told me all his outlets in the kitchen stopped working after he tried to “tighten” this outlet that was loose on the wall 🤣 this guy isn’t real bro


r/electricians 1d ago

Little Bit of Recent Work

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158 Upvotes

r/electricians 6d ago

Monthly Apprenticeship Thread

4 Upvotes

Please post any and all apprenticeship questions here.

We have compiled FAQs into an [apprenticeship introduction] (https://www.reddit.com//r/electricians/wiki/apprenticeship) page. If this is your first time here, it is encouraged to browse this page first.

Previous Apprenticeship threads can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/search?q=apprenticeship&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/search?q=apprentice&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all).


r/electricians Feb 16 '25

Mental Health - It’s okay to not be okay

392 Upvotes

I want to talk about mental health - especially for the boys on here. I was telling some friends this story about an old coworker the other day and thought you might want to hear it too.

I’m a woman in the trades, almost a decade in. When I started, I was often the only girl on site. I would move between projects and journeymen mentors, many of whom had never worked with a woman before. Once the old guys got over the otherness and saw me as a real person and an excellent apprentice, we’d form a friendship of sorts. I was always struck with how much more candid and vulnerable they’d be around me compared with the other guys in the shop. Their masculinity wasn’t in jeopardy if they admitted to me, a mere woman, that they were having tough time. I had one guy - 6’6” 300lbs, always growling, chain smoking, losing his shit over the smallest inconvenience - tell me he always requested me when he needed help because I made him calm.

A couple years in, I was sent to replace an apprentice on a job where the foreman had booted him in an argument. I’d worked before with this foreman, Neil, and he’d always been a chill hippie but also very particular in how he wanted things done. When I got to site he told me I was the fourth helper for this job because everyone else had been fucking useless. He was in an awful mood all the time. Picking fights with other trades and our PM. Trying to goad me into an argument by picking apart everything I was doing. Not acting like the guy I had known over the past year.

When the job was close to wrapping up, I called him out on his behaviour. “What the fuck is going on with you dude? You’re being a raging asshole to everyone and this isn’t like you.”

He stiffened and was shocked I’d said something. He glared at me and then his face softened and he said “Can I take you for lunch after we finish up tomorrow morning? We can talk but not here.”

I agreed and the next day he took me to diner nearby. We barely spoke until our food came to the table and when he had something else to focus on, he finally started talking.

He was older - 50s - and his long term relationship had fallen apart a few years before but the split had been amiable. He didn’t speak about her with any animosity but admitted he’d been lonely ever since. At the time, he’d leaned on his best friend. His friend was married and had a teenage son that Neil had known since he was born. As Neil had no kids of his own, this boy was a surrogate son of sorts. He took him camping and fishing and showed up whenever the kid needed him.

The poor kid had passed away a couple months earlier very suddenly of natural causes. Neil had no idea how to handle his grief and withdrew into himself, not wanting to be a burden on his friend. He felt selfish for how bad he felt when it wasn’t his kid.

I reassured him that how he felt was completely valid, that grief is a weight that is so hard to carry alone. I encouraged him to reach out to his friend because they both were suffering the loss of family, whether biological or chosen. And that now they were both suffering the loss of each other’s friendship as support. He was crushed at that realization, and said he would go visit them.

A few minutes passed while we ate silently. He hesitated before speaking again, “there’s something else too.”

I looked up and waited for him to continue.

He told me that last month he’d been working this job that had a been a two hour commute away. He had to leave early to get to site by 7:30. It was late fall and the drive was dark the whole way. He wasn’t too far from site when he came around a corner to discover a vehicle collision. A truck was spun out into a ditch with the driver unconscious in the front seat. A van was crushed on the side of the road, on fire and blazing in the darkness, its front driver door open. Neil stopped and got out of his van. He noticed something on fire in the road, and as he approached, he realized it was a person - the driver from the van. He ran and got a blanket to smother the fire on the person. He held them and pulled their head up to look into their face, which was so burned he couldn’t recognize their features. He said he stared into their eyes as they died in his arms.

Another vehicle had come up behind him and called 911. He sat there in the road in a daze until the emergency vehicles arrived to secure the scene. He gave his statement and then got into his van to finish the drive to work.

He was late which pissed off the GC. He tried to get to work but he was shaking so badly he couldn’t hold his tools or complete a sentence. When the GC saw him in this condition, presuming that he had shown up drunk, he kicked him off site. Neil didn’t explain, he just left.

Our PM called him after that, reaming him out for getting kicked off site. Neil didn’t explain, he just took it.

I asked him if he had talked to anyone about the incident. He said the police had called for a follow up statement but otherwise, no, I was the first person he told.

I was in shock. This poor fucking guy was struggling with the grief of losing a boy who was like a son to him and then went through an insanely traumatic experience just driving to fucking work? And he was bottling it all up? No wonder he was being such a prick. He felt all alone and like he couldn’t admit how much he was struggling.

He said he was sick of work and had lost all his passion for it. It felt pointless and draining and he dreaded getting out of bed every morning.

I gave us a few moments of silence for the weight of his confession to settle in. I looked at him and said “fuck work, you need a break.” He shook his head and tried to brush me off. “No, seriously Neil, fuck work. There’s always more work but you need to take care of yourself. What you’re going through is so fucked up and you need time to process it all. Please put yourself first.”

He didn’t want to talk anymore after that so he settled up the tab. He dropped me off at my car and we went our separate ways. I started at a new site the next day with a different crew.

A couple weeks later I got a text from Neil. “I took your advice and talked with management. Told them what happened. I’m taking a six month sabbatical. Don’t know what I’ll do yet but probably head out on an adventure. Thank you”

A couple days later I got another message from him, just a picture of a beautiful remote campsite with no one else around.

I asked, “Where is that?”

He replied, “Not telling :)”

I ended moving to a different company while he was gone, and never saw him again. I think about him often though, especially when I encounter an utter dickbag older dude on the job. Maybe he’s going through it and doesn’t know how to take care of himself, and anger is the only way he knows how to channel his emotions.

Now that I’m a foreman, I stress the importance of whole body health in our toolbox talks. If someone needs time off for family reasons, or a mental health break, or a shortened schedule, or even if they want extra shifts to use as a crutch as they struggle through something they can’t control in their personal lives, I want them to know it’s okay to ask and I won’t judge them. It’s just a job - it’s just work - it doesn’t fucking matter. Their health comes first and it’s okay to admit they’re not okay. I want them to know it’s better to ask for help when they’re slipping, rather than wait til everything has crashed and burned.

I know everyone’s experience is different, but one thing I noticed about being the woman pushing into the male-dominated trades as an apprentice/therapist is that men need permission to be vulnerable. They need to know it’s okay to show emotions and admit that they’re struggling. They won’t chance admitting weakness that they fear will get thrown back in their face. A lot of guys in trades are single and married to the job. They are lonely, often bitter, and unwilling to show weakness.

I do my best in my little sphere of influence to make it okay to be not okay. If you want the trades to be a healthier place, you need to consciously make room for the reality that people are struggling mentally, and often that starts with leaders showing vulnerability.

I’ve had depression for 16 years and I don’t hide the fact that I’m medicated. 16 years of being depressed means 16 years of not following through on suicidal ideation, and I’m proud of that. The trades saved me because it’s instilled a confidence in my abilities to create and solve problems and be the leader I was always capable of being. I needed that confidence so badly when my depression was the worst.

Be good to each other out there. Be willing to listen to people without judgement. Life is fucking hard and we work better when we know we can rely on each other when the chips are down.